Our team modeled, prototyped, and collaborated with Ecovative Design to grow a mycelium-based chassis for our biological drone. Below you'll find process photos, part designs, and links to open source model files for downloading and additively manufacturing your own biological or bio-inspired unmanned aerial vehicle. Finally, you can see images of the biological, biodegradable UAV that we built and flew!
Harvesting a pure bacterial cellulose sheet.
Experimenting with cellulose material shape.
Layering cellulose to create thicker leather, see here at the back of the hood.
Variable thickness elements and experimental fragment attachment methods.
Spreading a cellulose sheet out to dry.
Mycelium drone chassic, modeled by our team and produced by Ecocative.
Starting Small, Ending Big
Realizing that cellulose acetate is tough but thin, our team was in need of a building material that was tough and lightweight. So, we reached out to Evocative Design, a pioneering fungal-mycelium-based biomaterial company, to prototype a mycelium form that could serve as the chassis of our vehicle. Thanks to Evocative, we were able to construct a prototype biological unmanned aerial vehicle!
But we didn't stop there. Our team was enthusiastic about drone design and so we developed concept UAV designs meant to inspire future scientists and designers to think outside the box about how a future, partially living vehicle might look. Pseudo-natural and pseudo-industrial, our drone design references the traditional biological architecture of birds while embracing industrial additive manufacturability.
All 3D printable files for this concept drone are available in the downloads section. Images of our work follow:
Concept UAV Design
Biological UAV Concept, Exploded View
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Materials
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